Legal Commentary

jolly fellow

Posted on September 04, 2008
Paul Caron has compiled a list of pre-teaching fellowships and VAP programs, and Brian Leiter has responded to a question and invited commenters to respond as well regarding strategies for applying to these programs. I'm not going to reiterate the obvious advantages for candidates and hosting schools in these programs, so please assume that I take them as givens...

Palin's Pregnancy

Posted on September 04, 2008
Within the tabloid-worthy litany of Sarah Palin disclosures was this: "And she had waited until she was seven months pregnant to make public news that she was expecting a fifth child this year." (The New York Times story is here.) First, hiding being seven months pregnant is an impressive feat - think Seinfeld's Elaine in baggy coats and careful camera shots...

Hypocrisy All the Way Down

Posted on September 03, 2008
In all the political back and forth of the last few days, I've noticed a pronounced tendency of the blogosphere to focus on hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the biggest sin. Although there are all sorts of interesting facts flying around out there, the substantive debate on these issues is thinner than it appears...

I've Got a Golden Ticket

Posted on September 03, 2008
Last year, I purchased over 400 copies of the U.S. News & World Report graduate school rankings edition. I was hoping to find one of the five golden tickets that the magazine had hidden throughout the country, tickets that would give me (and the four other lucky winners) a free tour of the top-secret rankings factory where the magazine creates its famous lists...

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The KPMG Prosecution...a Little Help from CrimPro Types?

Posted on September 03, 2008
Notwithstanding Dan's gentle invitation to depart, I'm going to stick around a little in order to share the stage with the great bunch who are just coming aboard. For instance, here's a question for Carissa and any other crimpro types who might have ideas...

Law in a Nutshell, Wikipedia-Style

Posted on September 03, 2008
Students have sometimes cited Wikipedia to me in class or by e-mail as their legal reference guide. Along the lines of "As Wikipedia says, Erie means...." Sometimes they've even quoted paragraphs of it to me in e-mail. Unfortunately, this brings out the curmudgeon in me...

A Noteworthy Trend in Child Support Prosecutions?

Posted on September 02, 2008
Professor Berman already has posted on the new court data for criminal filings in federal district courts though 2007, and he has highlighted a few interesting statistical tidbits in this data. I noted another one as a read the data, and I just don't have the insider's view to gauge whether the numbers reveal a trend of any import: In 1995, only 35 criminal cases were filed for offenses involving failure to pay child support...

Near Unanimity on Unanimity

Posted on September 02, 2008
The National Law Journal just ran a story on a new effort to get the Supreme Court to re-visit its decision in Apodaca v. Oregon (1972), which allows states to adopt non-unanimous decision rules in the criminal jury context. Only two states have adopted such rules, notwithstanding the Supreme Court's permission (though many countries have non-unanimous jury decision rules for criminal convictions) -- and some criminal defendants in Louisiana and Oregon and their lawyers think the time is ripe for overruling Apodaca...

Check-Box Experience

Posted on September 02, 2008
I'd like to thank Dan M and the rest of the PB crew for having me back again. For those of you who don't know who I am (most of you, most likely), I'm an associate professor of economics at the University of Arizona. I'm very interested in law and in law & economics, though I don't have any formal legal training...

Goodbye, Del Martin

Posted on September 02, 2008
Our beautiful city?s light is dimmed this week, for loss of a wonderful citizen. We have lost Del Martin, who passed away this week at the age of 87, leaving behind her wife and partner of fifty-five years, Phyllis Lyon (image source: New York Times), as well as family and friends...

Meta guest

Posted on September 02, 2008
So, as I undertake another guest stint at this fabulous blog, I wonder (aloud) about the motivations of serial guest blogging. Some guests (Rick Hills leaps first to mind, as does my colleague Jeff Harrison over at Moneylaw), by dint of voice and intellect, make an impression...

Who "owns" airport access?

Posted on September 02, 2008
The brawl among administrative agencies over who controls valuable airport access continues. (See my prior post about Auctioning Airport Slots here .) Part of the story's attraction is that it pits local/regional authorities against federal ones - the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey against the Federal Aviation Administration...

Launch Day at Marquette

Posted on September 02, 2008
Today marks the launch of a new faculty blog by our friends at Marquette Law, including Prawfs veterans and soon-to-be guests: Michael O'Hear, Bruce Boyden, Paul Secunda, and Richard Esenberg. Keith Sharfman has a nice post up on the "decanal encouragement" of prawf blogging...

Getting a job in the law teaching market

Posted on September 02, 2008
With Labour Day behind us, and all its delusions that summer may still be enjoyed, it's important to address the interests of those on the market for a law teaching job, or those who are thinking of making that move in the next couple years. Past prawfs guest Glenn Cohen (who himself nicely transitioned from a fellowship at HLS to a professorship at HLS) extended lots of advice during his past visits, which I thought I'd gather in one spot for those thinking about making the transition...

The feds' commandeering of local governments to enforce immigration law

Posted on September 01, 2008
Hadar Aviram's post on San Francisco's battle with the feds over immigration policy highlights one of the gaping holes carved in state autonomy by the 1996 amendments to federal immigration and welfare laws. Those amendments bar state and local governments from restricting their agencies or employees from sending or receiving information about an individual's immigration status, thereby allowing state and local officials to defy the laws that create their offices and instead employ their state-conferred powers for federal purposes...

Sanctuary City: They Say It Like It's a Bad Thing...?

Posted on September 01, 2008
Hi, PrawfsBlawg readers! And, for those of us who have started teaching this week or who will start on the next one, have an enriching, interesting, productive and sane semester. We could start with a smooth, easy, welcoming first post, but, as Kima Greggs says on The Wire, sometimes things just gotta play hard...

Rotations

Posted on August 31, 2008
A word of great gratitude is in order for our August crew of guest-bloggers: thanks much to Brooks Holland, Verity Winship, Lesley Wexler, Bruce Boyden, James Grimmelmann, Adam Kolber, Brian "Zoom" Galle, and Adil Haque. Some of them may be lingering around for a little while longer this coming month, but we also have some new folks to welcome to our conversation...

Aviram and Scott Chatting

Posted on August 31, 2008
My superstar colleague, Hadar Aviram, was just interviewed by Law & Policy's editor Colin Scott about her recent article, "How Law Thinks of Disobedience: Perceiving and Addressing Desertion and Conscientious Objection in Israeli Military Courts." You can listen in here...

Electoral College ties

Posted on August 31, 2008
Sandy Levinson and others have, in recent years, been calling attention to what they regard as the Constitution's failures. One such failure, it is often contended, is the Electoral College. Well, today a good friend of mine sent in some thoughts about a "fascinating, and utterly absurd" electoral (theoretical) possibility ...

Sarah Palin and Union Politics

Posted on August 30, 2008
In all the hubbub about the Republican VP pick, I have seen little on something that I thought was quite remarkable: the populist rhetoric in McCain's introduction. Here are some excerpts from his speech: I'm very happy today to spend my birthday with you and to make a historic announcement in Dayton, a city built on hard, honest work of good people...

Palin & the structural protections of federalism

Posted on August 30, 2008
The blogs are abuzz with whether or not Palin ought to be regarded as sufficiently experienced to serve as VP. The typical defense of Palin's nomination emphasizes that she is the only one of the four nominees for Prez or veep with 'executive" experience, having served as a mayor of a small town and, briefly, as governor of a small state...

The West Wing: 4-for-4?

Posted on August 29, 2008
Earlier in the week, I wrote about the idea that The West Wing's final season seemed to have predicted three of the four players in the 2008 presidential election: the young, charismatic, relatively inexperienced minority Democrat; his older, establishment, foreign-policy-steeped running mate; and his moderate, anti-GOP-establishment, foreign-policy-focused Republican opponent...

Thanks Again, and Tune in Next Week...

Posted on August 29, 2008
Thanks to Dan and the Prawfsblawg crew for inviting me back for a return visit, I've really enjoyed it. In fact, I'm excited to announce that beginning on Tuesday, you will be able to find me blogging on a permanent basis at Marquette University Law School's new faculty blog, along with former Prawfs guests Michael O'Hear and Paul Secunda and other Marquette faculty members...

Will Sarah Palin suffer the same fate as Harriet Miers?

Posted on August 29, 2008
So, despite my apparent hostility to Obama's selection of Biden, and my sense that Obama was not at the top of his game during most of last night's acceptance speech, I think the election is now the Dems to lose for the reasons illuminated in Prof. Russell Korobkin's post: The homepage of the town of Wasila, Alaska (population 5469 as of the last census), has links to three news stories...

It's Official: Judge Kent Is Not Funny

Posted on August 29, 2008
Judge Samuel Kent, once the sole district judge in the Southern District of Texas, Galveston Division, has been indicted on sexual abuse charges after an investigation lasting several months. He is alleged to have assaulted a member of his court staff in 2003 and again in 2007...

Why don't feminists like federalism?

Posted on August 29, 2008
I might be mistaken, but my impression from the work of Reva Siegel (on the 19th Amendment), Anne Dailey, Jill Hasday, Kristi Collins (on the domestic relations exception to Article III diversity jurisdiction), and others, is that scholars sympathetic to feminism do not like judicially enforced federalism very much...

Why course packets ought to be fair use

Posted on August 29, 2008
Yesterday I received a set of "scholarly perspectives" from UCLA Law School -- a handy little reprint containing digested versions of their faculty's scholarship. Doug Lichtman's contribution contained the following statement about publishers' desire to facilitate the creation of course packets -- an assertion that is, from my experience, so wildly implausible that it makes me suspect that Lichtman has never actually spoken with an employee of a publisher's "permissions department" in person...

Io v. Veoh: Harmful to YouTube?

Posted on August 28, 2008
Yesterday's decision in Io Group, Inc. v. Veoh Networks, Inc. is generally being hailed around the blogosphere as a win, or at least a bit of good news, for YouTube in its ongoing infringement fight against Viacom. See the L.A. Times, CNet, Wired, Silicon Alley Insider, Techdirt, TechCrunch...

Human "dignity" and relationships

Posted on August 28, 2008
My fellow "Mirror of Justice" blogger, and legal-ethics scholar, Rob Vischer, had an interesting post the other day about David Luban's new-ish book, Legal Ethics and Human Dignity. In particular, Rob focused on this passage: "I suspect that human dignity is not a metaphysical property of individual humans, but rather a property of relationships between humans -- between, so to speak, the dignifier and the dignified...

How Should Punitive Damages Work?

Posted on August 28, 2008
I'm very excited to announce that I've recently uploaded to SSRN a working draft of my new paper, How Should Punitive Damages Work? You can download it here. It's still a work in progress but I hope to have solved a few policy and constitutional issues in it...

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